SPRING 2012 Magazine Celebrating 40 Years of Evergreen Spring 2012 | 1 Vol. 33, No. 02 Spring 2012 Member, Council for Advancement and Support of Education Publisher Lee Hoemann Editor Ann Mary Quarandillo Designers Judy Nuñez-Piñedo Alyssa Parker ’06 Dear Ladies and Gentlemen of Evergreen—Greeners—Geoducks: Writers Carolyn Shea When the person whose name they put on the Plaza addresses you it might seem like a ghostly Ann Mary Quarandillo voice from the past. As I look back over my more than 40 years at the college, as both founding Dick Anderson president and faculty member, I cherish our accomplishments with pride. I also know that it is up to Todd Sprague us to ensure Evergreen continues to offer new students opportunities to excel. Jason Wettstein The thought of Greeners out in the world warms this ghostly heart. Your energy now quickens Class Notes Editor every single profession, every walk of life. I like to think that, nationwide, you grace action with Pat Barte ’91 the critical and communicative yet humane and cooperative manner gained in Evergreen seminars. Staff Photography Shauna Bittle ’98 Your impressive performance as graduates makes you more important than ever to Evergreen Riley Shiery students of today, and tomorrow. As you know, a college that stirs and expands minds depends and Photo Services upon much more than simple adherence to academic schedules. Bright, needy students must be maintained with generous scholarships, faculty invigorated by attending conferences in their Director of Alumni Relations disciplines, the community spurred by important interdisciplinary minds invited to give lectures, R.J. Burt library and labs stocked with the latest resources. Whether sharing your knowledge and talents as a guest in the classroom; contributing financially; or exercising your vote and lending your voice to support the college; you are needed. While the Evergreen Magazine is State helps fund Evergreen’s buildings and about a third of annual College operations, they have published twice annually fundamentally shifted the cost of higher education onto the shoulders of our students and their by the Office of Marketing, families. Your support can directly help students or whatever component of academic vitality Communications and is most important to you. Giving regularly to the college in small amounts is a strategy that has College Relations. worked for Barbara and I, and one we highly recommend. We certainly never had a big chunk of money to give. All you have to do is multiply a fairly small figure by 12 months and then by the The Evergreen State College number of years. It’s amazing how it adds up. 2700 Evergreen Pkwy. NW Olympia, WA 98505 This virtual ghost may become a real one any day now, but before that he hopes to see the number of alumni supporting their college as yet one more source of Evergreen pride. In any case, he hopes To submit items for class that each one of you will enjoy a good and thoughtful life. notes, contact the Office of Sincerely, Alumni Relations 360.867.6551 or [email protected], or fill out the form at www.evergreen.edu/alumni. Charles J. McCann Founding President Member of the Faculty (Emeritus) Although retired, the McCanns remain intricately tied to the college through the Charles and Barbara McCann Endowed Scholarship, established in 1977 at the end of Charles’s nine years as president. He © 2012 has also donated thousands of books in history and literature from his personal library as well as darkroom equipment to the college. The Evergreen State College 2 | Spring 2012 Inside Evergreen Features p04 p24 Every Picture Tells a Story Riding the Hydrologic Cycle If Matt Groening ’77 hadn’t been Into the Future the CPJ editor when Lynda Barry ’79 Cindy Peyser Safronoff ’92 and her came to Evergreen, modern animation love of water may someday wouldn’t be the same. benefit us all. Photo: Angela Richardson P9 p26 Not Your Typical Women in Radio Net Gains What do a concert violist and an Former Geoduck Jackie Robinson ’02 actress have in common? A home shares love and lessons of basketball. on public radio. p12 p28 Decisive Moments Define What Do You Love? A Photojournalist’s Career From the Bike Shop to artisan beer, Saed Hindash ’92 turned his passion from potlucks to Geoducks, we’re for wielding a camera into an award- celebrating Evergreen’s 40th winning career. with 40 things that make the South Sound great. P14 Having a Voice in the Industry Combining his news skills and “The Voice” made Joe Washington ’75 a News & Notes broadcasting hit on WTBS and HGTV. Class Notes p34 Memoriams p46 p16 Trabajando para Usted Jaime Méndez ’95 anchors Seattle’s first local Spanish-language newscast. p18 Adventures in Biotech For millions of people with rheumatoid arthritis, Patricia Beckmann’s winding path to success has made a huge difference. p20 Got a Dirty Job? Win Blodgett ’86 and Holland Pump On the cover: Detail can engineer a solution. from the Dragon Wall, the four-story mural that winds up the interior stairwell of the Library building. Completed in spring 1972, it was p22 created by students in the The Market Strategist Man and Art academic Brett Redfearn ’87 brings an Evergreen program, taught by approach to Wall Street. faculty members Donald Chan, José Arguelles and Cruz Esquivel. Spring 2012 | 3 4 | Spring 2012 4 | Spring 2012 By Dick Anderson In the 40 years since Evergreen opened, the world of cartooning and animation has been turned on its ear. Newspaper comic sections have shrunk dramatically; the market for alternative-minded artists has gone through a boom-and-bust cycle; and animation has morphed into an anything-goes medium with something to offer for all. Evergreen was there at the dawn of this transformation. Lynda Barry ’79 sprang fully formed onto the alternate weekly scene, becoming a recurring guest on David Letterman and channeling her idiosyncratic voice into her comics, novels, a play and teaching. Matt Groening ’77 made the leap from the pages of those same weeklies to create “The Simpsons,” the signature show for the upstart Fox network. Five hundred episodes (and counting) and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame later, he rewrote the rules for TV animation, paving the way for the likes of “South Park,” “Family Guy,” and the alt- cartoon universe of shows populating Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Craig Bartlett ’81 honed his chops making cartoons from clay, contributing his talents to the iconic “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” and “Rugrats” series before creating his own pair of kids’ shows, “Hey Arnold!” (for the 6- to 10-year-old Nickelodeon-watching crowd) and “Dinosaur Train” (for 2- to 6-year-old PBS viewers). And Tommy Thompson ’11? He’s the new kid on the block, and he represents the next generation of Evergreen animators. He’s still finding his voice—imagine Tim Burton as an introvert—but he’s poised to build on the talents that made him Most Promising Filmmaker at the Spokane International Film Festival in January. Lynda Barry certainly believes that comics deserve to be taken seriously— “To this day, it’s one of the most powerful things I was given at Evergreen; “They are able to transfer images from one mind to the next as wonderfully the idea that the thing I call my work is from a different part of me than as any other art form.” She laments “the creep of the scholarly approach to what comes off the top of my head,” Barry adds. “To start developing a comics…Something mighty is ruined when someone tells you exactly how relationship with that working part of me, the part of me that ‘speaks’ to experience any kind of art in the same way fresh string beans are ruined the image language, and to be doing this at the age of 20 gave me a by boiling the living hell out them.” tremendous advantage.” If you were to draw a genealogy of Barry’s bibliography—her breakthrough At the time, Matt Groening was editor of the Cooper Point Journal, where strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” (created in 1978), her novel (and later play) he pledged to print anything anyone submitted. “That was a challenge I The Good Times Are Killing Me (1988), and the writing and art tutorials wanted to beat him at,” Barry recalls. “I kept submitting crazier and crazier What It Is (2008) and Picture This: The Near-Sighted Monkey Book (2010)— things—outraged letters to the editor about things that happened to me you can trace it all back to Evergreen, and her mentor, Marilyn Frasca. when I was little that had nothing to do with TESC, or comics that were really strange, comics about little girls who could do things like remove “She was mysterious,” Barry writes from the University of Wisconsin- their arms and legs at will. No matter what I submitted, he printed it. I Madison, where she’s spring artist in residence (her first semester-long came to really love him for this and for all of the wild things he was doing residency after years of doing five-day workshops around the country). with the paper.” “She seemed very interested in finding out what interested her students and working from there, but somehow she did this with very little Last fall, Drawn & Quarterly published Blabber Blabber Blabber: Volume conversation. No chatting or small talk. Her information came directly 1 of Everything, which guaranteed that Ernie Pook’s Comeek and the from the work we were doing and she seemed to establish a relationship works that followed will find an audience for generations to follow.